Death in Paradise (47 page)

"Hi, little spy. How you doin'?"

She blinked her eyes and nestled closer to my body. "Ugh," she said.

Nihilani touched my shoulder gently, then pulled his hand back and stared at the blood on his fingers. "We've got EMTs right over here." He held out his arms to take Laura but I shook my head.

"I think she'd better stay with me. Everyone else here is a stranger."

He put a hand under my elbow and helped me up. "We're not strangers." Bernstein had materialized beside him.

"No. But you're big and scary and she's small and scared."

"Yeah?" Bernstein said, "Well, you're big and scary, too." It was the nicest thing he'd ever said to me.

They fell in on either side of me, like an honor guard, protecting me as we made our way through the crowd toward the flashing red lights of an ambulance. The EMTs were working on Linda Janovich's battered face. One of them, a reedy blond man spattered with blood, turned as we approached. "Got another patient for you," Bernstein said.

"Be with you in a minute," he said.

"How about right now," I suggested. "That woman is the reason this child is in a battered, unconscious state."

"Yeah, well someone did a pretty good job on this woman, too," he said.

"Thanks," I said. Despite my full arms and abbreviated costume, I sketched a little curtsey. "The credit is all mine. And she was the one with the knife."

Linda snatched the scissors he was holding out of his hand and came at me, screeching like a banshee. Bernstein and Nihilani both dove for her as I turned away to protect the child I was holding. I felt something sharp dig into my arm as they seized her and pulled her back. "Everything would have been fine if it hadn't been for you," she screamed. "Nobody else cared what happened to Martina. If your partner, Suzanne, had come instead of you—"

I turned to face her. Everything was garish in the bright lights around us, headlights and red lights and blue lights. The whole world was awash with swirling lights, surreal, psychedelic, as though we'd stepped through time into another dimension, from the soft, damp, quiet darkness into this bright, noisy glare. A limp, trusting child lay curled against my chest. A pair of bright, shiny scissors was imbedded in my arm. I stood tall and bloody, fierce and angry, bruised and unutterably weary. I had heard this all before. I had been here before. Everything would have been fine.

"Whose idea was it, Linda? Yours or Jeff's?"

"Mine," she said, defiantly, her voice thick and stifled by the broken nose. "Jeff's like a parakeet. Attracted by bright, shiny things. Preferably bright, shiny dollars. That's how Martina got him. That's how Martina lost him. And if it hadn't been for you, getting her all stirred up about right and wrong, Rory would have been paid off, Jeff and I would have been rich, and Martina would have been another unfortunate victim of the lingerie killer."

"Who else was in on it?" That was the one thing I really wanted to know.

"That is for me to know and for you to always wonder about." She turned her back on me and sat down heavily on the stretcher they'd gotten out.

My knees were about to give way. I wanted to march over, toss her off the stretcher, and lie down on it myself. No. I wanted to lay Laura gently down and then kick Linda Janovich all over the parking lot the way, in moments of extreme pique, I sometimes kicked a stuffed cat around my bedroom at home.

The medic was staring, mesmerized, at the scissors in my arm. "You want your scissors back?" I said. "Go ahead. Come and get 'em." I was feeling mean. Mad at him for putting Linda's needs ahead of Laura's. For attending to the bad guy and making an innocent child wait. For having his priorities all screwed up.

I looked down. Laura's eyes were open. She was watching me closely. "You're so cool!" she whispered. I bent and kissed her forehead.

The ground was breaking up around me. Hopping and jumping and buckling and writhing. Either we were having an earthquake or old iron-will Kozak was losing it. It was the scissors, I thought, slicing through my resolve, cutting my ties with reality. I didn't want to let Laura go but I also didn't want to drop her. I shoved her into Nihilani's arms as I sagged heavily against Bernstein. "Take her," I said. "Please. Take care of her."

The sight of scissors sticking out of me was making me sick. I grabbed them, pulled out the imbedded blade, and tossed them to the staring medic. My arm hurt like hell. The world was standing still again but I still felt shaky. "Lenny. I'd like to sit down somewhere. Please." He led me over to a cruiser, opened the door, eased me down on the seat. I buried my head in my hands. He went to the trunk, got a blanket, and wrapped it around me. Then he left me alone.

I huddled there with my eyes closed. Against my eyelids, car trunks flew open and revealed curled-up bodies. Again and again and again.

People came and whispered in my ear. People from the past. Telling me that it wasn't their fault. Telling me they just had to do it. Telling me I didn't understand, explaining why they'd killed, how helpless they were, how they'd been driven to it. I got up, clutching my blanket around me, and went to where someone was still working on Linda's face. "Don't try to delude yourself. It was your fault," I said. "You didn't have to do it. No one made you be a killer. We have a choice in this life whether to be good or evil. You chose evil. Now you've got to own that. You've got to live with that."

The EMT glared at me. "Do you mind?" he said. "I'm trying to treat an injured patient here."

"Yes. I mind. I mind that this woman conspired to take two lives and tried to take two more, one of them mine, one that helpless child. I mind that very much. I hope, during the years you're going to spend in prison, Linda, assuming you get prison and that Hawaii doesn't have the death penalty, that what you've done comes back time after time to haunt you. I hope it preys on your mind and gnaws at your guts. I hope that you see your victims every time you close your eyes. I hope, when you think about your son and daughter being deprived of their parents, that you also think about the others who lost people they cared about, like Rory's parents. I hope you ache. I hope you hurt. I hope you suffer long and hard."

Now I saw that a second ambulance had pulled up behind the first. I wandered over, trailing my blanket like a cape. It was absurd, huddling in a blanket on a warm night, but I still needed it. I found Laura on a stretcher with Bernstein and a friendly-looking EMT bending over her. She looked so small and scared but her eyes were open and she seemed to be more alert. "Thea..." She stretched out a hand toward me. "Why do you have blood all over your face? Are you hurt?"

I sat down beside her and took her hand, looking over at Bernstein. "Do I have blood all over my face?" He nodded.

"No, Laura, I'm not hurt." Much as I'd relished getting in my whacks against Linda, I was a little embarrassed explaining this to a child. "I had a fight with Linda. That tall woman with the dark hair."

"The one who put me in the trunk."

"Yes. That one. She came after me with a knife so I broke her nose."

The EMT finished whatever she was doing. "We're going to take her to the hospital now. Did you want to ride along?"

"I really think you ought to take her mother."

Laura clung to my hand. "I'd rather have you."

"You're not her mother?" the woman said, surprised.

I shook my head. I'd never been mistaken for a mother before I met Laura. It was a funny feeling. "No, Laura, I have to stay here and talk with the detectives. We'll get your mom down here and—"

"Do I have to go to the hospital? Why can't I just go upstairs and take a bath and go to bed now?"

I looked at Bernstein. He looked at the EMT. She shrugged. "Just as a precaution. In a case like this, where a child has been unconscious—"

"What if we got a nurse to stay with her?" I was thinking about Marie Pryzinski.

The EMT shrugged again. "It's up to her parents, really. Where are her parents, anyway? Shouldn't they be here?" She looked at Bernstein.

He called a uniformed officer over and instructed him to go find Laura's mother.

"Thea, you said you weren't hurt," Laura said. She was staring at our joined hands where a thin stream of blood from the scissors stab was coursing over the interlaced fingers.

"I'm fine, kiddo. I just need a couple Band-Aids."

The EMT rolled her eyes, came around, and started mopping up blood. She told me that the cut on my shoulder and the one on my arm ought to be stitched and asked when my most recent tetanus shot was.

"I hate stitches. Just stick 'em together with some butterfly Band-Aids. I'll be fine. I heal fast. And my last tetanus shot was..." I tried to remember. "Let's see... I got stabbed in December... maybe it was then. I don't know. It's current, though, I assure you." She rolled her eyes again. I knew I was a medic's nightmare. But I was being very good. Promise not to send me to a hospital and my mood instantly improves.

She was getting ready to stick on some bandages when someone behind me said, "You really ought to get those stitched."

Ed Pryzinski. I'd forgotten to call him back. "Oh, Ed... I'm so sorry... I—"

He waved away my explanation, looking around us angrily. "Looks like you've been busy." What a range of emotions. I'd gone from heroic to exhausted to chastened. I couldn't meet his eyes. "I'm very good at stitches," he offered, and I was childishly grateful that he wasn't yelling at me. He went away to consult the EMT about supplies, then came back and went to work. "You won't feel a thing."

Bernstein pulled out his notebook and looked down at Laura. "You ready to talk to me?"

She looked at me. "You'll stay?" she asked.

"If you want."

She looked from Bernstein to Pryzinski. "And will you both promise not to yell at Thea? She's very brave." Having secured their promises, she was ready. "I thought I was tired but I couldn't sleep, so I went back down to the lobby one more time and that man—the one Thea and I had seen in the bar—came up to me and said that Thea wanted me to meet her outside. So I went out and there was a tall woman with long dark hair but when I walked up to her, it wasn't Thea and then they grabbed me and put me in the car and drove somewhere and they parked and that's when they made me make the call...."

"What call?"

"To Thea. Telling her she had to come and meet them and bring the computer or else they'd hurt me. Thea asked me who they were and I told her. That's when they got mad at me and she hit me and told me to shut up. And she grabbed the phone away from him and—"

Her eyes filled with tears. "I wanted to tell Thea not to come but I didn't get a chance... and then they started trying to tie me up with that tape and I kept fighting them and I was getting all scratched and bruised and then she hit me and I knocked my head against the car. When I woke up, I was someplace all dark and my face was wrapped with tape and I couldn't breathe and I was afraid that maybe I was dead... or going to be dead... and maybe they'd buried me or something. But I couldn't call for help or anything. I tried to get loose. I kicked and struggled and all I ended up doing was banging my head on something and then..."

Ed Pryzinski laid a last strip of tape on my arm and patted my other shoulder gently. "You're all set," he murmured. "I'm going back to bed. And I promise not to tell your mother"—there was a significant pause—"or anyone else, what you've been up to. This time. But remember, Thea, babies need their mothers." He gave me a gentle hug and disappeared into the night.

"Excuse me! Just what the hell is going on here?" The polka-dot lady was standing there, glaring down at me. Tonight it was a lavender dress with tiny white dots. "Do you mind? This
is
my daughter...." She looked at me like I was something the cat had dragged in.

I pulled the blanket back around me, struggled up, and shuffled a few feet away so she could sit down next to Laura. I hovered there like a bedraggled crow, my blanket flapping in the wind. I felt like something the cat had dragged in and then played with for hours.

"Now then, Laura Mitchell, what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?"

"I got kidnapped and I almost got murdered," Laura said.

"The stories you tell," her mother said. "Detective, can you tell me what's going on?"

"She got kidnapped and she almost got murdered," he said. There were times when I really did like Detective Bernstein.

A small figure I hadn't noticed had sidled up beside her and was bending over the stretcher. Laura smiled up at her brother. "'Lo, nerd," she said.

Geoffrey Mitchell smiled. He had Laura's fair skin, though with blonder hair, and already he showed the promise of the man he was becoming. There was something protective and reassuring in the way he looked at Laura. "'Lo, freak. Mind if I join you?" He sat down on the stretcher without waiting for an answer. "Boy, when you have to write that stupid essay about what you did on your summer vacation, you'll actually have something to write about, won't you?"

Okay, so their mother was useless, but at least the kids supported each other. I'd overstayed my welcome and I'd pretty much exhausted the capacity of my body to function. I pulled the blanket tighter and started shuffling off toward the hotel, away from the lights and the commotion, away from the bad guys and the bad gals.

Halfway there, Nihilani emerged from the darkness. "Mind if I come up with you and take your statement?"

"Not at all. Mind if I lean on your arm?"

I limped through the lobby on the strong arm of the law, stopping on my way to retrieve the laptop. Upstairs, I collapsed on my couch and he brought a washcloth and cleaned the blood off my face. I put my head down and closed my eyes. Post-adrenaline exhaustion.

"Wouldn't you be more comfortable in the bed?" he asked.

"The bedroom's haunted."

He grunted and then I heard him get up, cross the room, and take a look for himself. He came back with a weary sigh. "I see what you mean," he agreed. He spread another blanket over me and tucked it in, nice and cozy. I had the sudden, unexpected vision of great stolid Nihilani tucking in small children very gently. I heard a pen click as he lowered himself into a chair. "Okay," he said. "So why do you think they were after you?"